2.

Tableau products
Tableau Product Suite

The Tableau Product Suite consists of

 Tableau Desktop

 Tableau Public

 Tableau Online

 Tableau Server

 Tableau Reader
Tableau Product Suite

For a clear understanding, data analytics in Tableau tool can be classified into two section.

1. Developer Tools: The Tableau tools that are used for development such as the creation
of dashboards, charts, report generation, visualization fall into this category. The Tableau
products, under this category, are the Tableau Desktop and the Tableau Public.

2. Sharing Tools: As the name suggests, the purpose of these Tableau products is sharing
the visualizations, reports, dashboards that were created using the developer tools.
Products that fall into this category are Tableau Online, Server, and Reader.

Let’s study all the Tableau products one by one.

Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop has a rich feature set and allows you to code and customize reports. Right from
creating the charts, reports, to blending them all together to form a dashboard, all the necessary
work is created in Tableau Desktop.

For live data analysis, Tableau Desktop provides connectivity to Data Warehouse, as well as
other various types of files. The workbooks and the dashboards created here can be either shared
locally or publicly.

Based on the connectivity to the data sources and publishing option, Tableau Desktop is
classified into

 Tableau Desktop Personal: The development features are similar to Tableau Desktop.
Personal version keeps the workbook private, and the access is limited. The workbooks
cannot be published online. Therefore, it should be distributed either Offline or in
Tableau Public.

 Tableau Desktop Professional: It is pretty much similar to Tableau Desktop. The

difference is that the work created in the Tableau Desktop can be published online or in
Tableau Server. Also, in Professional version, there is full access to all sorts of the
datatype. It is best suitable for those who wish to publish their work in Tableau Server.

Tableau Public

It is Tableau version specially build for the cost-effective users. By the word “Public,” it means
that the workbooks created cannot be saved locally; in turn, it should be saved to the Tableau’s
public cloud which can be viewed and accessed by anyone.
There is no privacy to the files saved to the cloud since anyone can download and access the
same. This version is the best for the individuals who want to learn Tableau and for the ones who
want to share their data with the general public.

Tableau Server

The software is specifically used to share the workbooks, visualizations that are created in the
Tableau Desktop application across the organization. To share dashboards in the Tableau Server,
you must first publish your work in the Tableau Desktop. Once the work has been uploaded to
the server, it will be accessible only to the licensed users.

However, It’s not necessary that the licensed users need to have the Tableau Server installed on
their machine. They just require the login credentials with which they can check reports via a
web browser. The security is high in Tableau server, and it is much suited for quick and effective
sharing of data in an organization.

The admin of the organization will always have full control over the server. The hardware and
the software are maintained by the organization.

Tableau Online

As the name suggests, it is an online sharing tool of Tableau. Its functionalities are similar to
Tableau Server, but the data is stored on servers hosted in the cloud which are maintained by the
Tableau group.

There is no storage limit on the data that can be published in the Tableau Online. Tableau Online
creates a direct link to over 40 data sources that are hosted in the cloud such as the MySQL,
Hive, Amazon Aurora, Spark SQL and many more.

To publish, both Tableau Online and Server require the workbooks created by Tableau Desktop.
Data that is streamed from the web applications say Google Analytics, Salesforce.com are also
supported by Tableau Server and Tableau Online.

Tableau Reader

Tableau Reader is a free tool which allows you to view the workbooks and visualizations created
using Tableau Desktop or Tableau Public. The data can be filtered but editing and modifications
are restricted. The security level is zero in Tableau Reader as anyone who gets the workbook can
view it using Tableau Reader.

If you want to share the dashboards that you have created, the receiver should have Tableau
Reader to view the document.
How does Tableau work?

Tableau connects and extracts the data stored in various places. It can pull data from any
platform imaginable. A simple database such as an excel, pdf, to a complex database like Oracle,
a database in the cloud such as Amazon webs services, Microsoft Azure SQL database, Google
Cloud SQL and various other data sources can be extracted by Tableau.

When Tableau is launched, ready data connectors are available which allows you to connect to
any database. Depending on the version of Tableau that you have purchased the number of data
connectors supported by Tableau will vary.

The pulled data can be either connected live or extracted to the Tableau’s data engine, Tableau
Desktop. This is where the Data analyst, data engineer work with the data that was pulled up and
develop visualizations. The created dashboards are shared with the users as a static file. The
users who receive the dashboards views the file using Tableau Reader.

The data from the Tableau Desktop can be published to the Tableau server. This is an enterprise
platform where collaboration, distribution, governance, security model, automation features are
supported. With the Tableau server, the end users have a better experience in accessing the files
from all locations be it a desktop, mobile or email.